Mix­ing me­dia into metaphor

Mag­icLogic, Jordi Forniés’s vivid ex­hi­bi­tion in the Dame St gallery last year, was full of the colours of his na­tive Barcelona. The artist, who is based in Dublin, paints in a style that re­calls other Cat­alo­nian artists – Gaudi, Miró, Tàpies – but is very much his own.

It is partly his back­ground as a chemist that gives Forniés’s work its dis­tinc­tive depth, tex­ture and colour. He of­ten makes his own pig­ments and uses an un­usual mix­ture of old and new ma­te­ri­als, from gold and cop­per leaf and pa­pyrus to la­tex and plas­tic.

There is a new sub­tlety of both colour and form in th­ese re­cent paint­ings, but the artist’s open­ness and his will­ing­ness to doc­u­ment his emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ences on can­vas is still ev­i­dent. An un­ex­pected side-track on life’s path is evoked in ox­i­dised slabs in Here to There (above), the joys of a brief love af­fair mapped out in seven blocks of indigo and pearl in Won­der­ful Week.

His life in Ire­land has in­flu­enced this new work. The view of the sea from his win­dows in­spired the stormy green and blue of Bro­ken Si­lence and the chang­ing Ir­ish weather is also cap­tured – this time play­fully – in Grian na hÉire­ann. But Forniés’s home­land is also still a source of in­spi­ra­tion, as can be seen from the large study The Se­cret Prom­ise, which cap­tures the griz­zled beauty of an an­cient olive tree.